Tag: microsoft

Twenty-two years ago, I wrote a thesis. It wasn’t a very good thesis, but it did what it needed to do. For years, its model files have been unreadable, because the spreadsheets were written in a ~1992 version of Microsoft Works. These are old files:

Quite recently, LibreOffice realized that there are old files out there that (unlike my thesis models) could still be useful. As they have no commercial requirement to only support the latest and greatest, LibreOffice added the ability to read these ancient works. So my old stuff lives again:

I found a screen dump that I used back in ’93 to illustrate the layout. The display was colour, but here it is brought back to life with a little bit of antialiasing:

LibreOffice can also read old AppleWorks files. Although Works 6 still runs on Catherine‘s Mac, it looks a bit … dated:

Thanks, LibreOffice! It’s sometimes easy to forget (like right after updated to Ubuntu 15.04, which decided that BlueTooth support was kindaoptional unless you jumped through hoops …) that people do write software just to be more useful.

The Ask Metafilter question “Basic line graph” spurred me to make this unpretty graph:

Here are the input data:

You need to make an X-Y (Scatter) plot. All others don’t have fully independent X-axes. Make your chart by selecting the first two data columns, then Insert Chart. Once the chart is in, right click/Control-click (OS X) to get this context menu:

which should show

You can add more data series by hitting Add. Here are the specs for the next two series:

I am trying to speak to my computer I’m not sure it understands the two well actually it’s doing not badly I’m speaking in a rather disjointed manner I have to go to New York state tomorrow I’m not quite sure why I have to look at twin turbo inns no I don’t have to look at twin turbo ends I have to look at wind turbine what’s

While it’s remarkably accurate I’m going to be really mean and bald face and sure I don’t know “bold face is that I’m going to be located anyway, to your things have calmed pear shaped nine

This is the voice of the Mr. Owns and I do I think I’m going to live. I suppose this is better than I expected especially since Mike accent is unusual most people in Canada do not understand a and so finally I have a computer that understands the this is a bit worrying isn’t it?

Well that wraps it up for dictation. You have a pleasant evening. Good night!

– what Microsoft speech recognition thinks I said. The random “what” and “nine” is me starting to laugh, and “bald face” is “blog this”.

I’ve always thought that Adobe missed a great opportunity when they didn’t make their basic PDF writer freely available for Windows. Other OSs now have transparent print-to-PDF options. If you’re lucky, a corporate PC might have MS Office Document Image Writer installed, but a 300dpi monochrome TIFF can’t compare to a PDF.